This chapter illuminated how climate change is made sense of on the island of Palawan in the Philippines, and the important role played by local processes in translating and reproducing the global discourse on climate change. Following a constructionist approach such as the sociocultural model (rather than the deficit model) and social representation theory, it was emphasized that sense-making is a multi-layered process that includes cognition and culture. Based on empirical data that was gathered in multi-method fieldwork over several months, it has been demonstrated in this chapter how the people of Palawan make sense of climate change and how they integrate the idea into their local ontologies.
By means of various empirical data, it has been shown how climate change is locally perceived and understood: as just another natural disaster that regularly hits the Philippines but hardly ever Palawan, because people there act more environmentally benign. It shows how this sense-making process is inextricably linked to the specific ecological, socio-political, and cultural context of the island; a process that makes climate change a coherent, plausible, and tangible concept that fits into what people already believe, experience and do. The local reception of climate-change discourse therefore depends on pre-existing, shared systems of knowledge and meaning that are reproduced and maintained by circular rather than unidirectional communication. Institutions like the PCSD or the local government administration of Puerto Princesa City are integral components of a complex network of dominant and interwoven discourses and narratives such as the national discourse on natural disasters and Palawan’s very popular environmentalism. They all play a role in how knowledge and meaning about climate change are distributed, organized, and structured on the island. The same is true for interpersonal or even performative ways of communication, as the practical example of the eco caravan shows. As instances of local translation regimes, these forms, agents, and interactions of
communications more accurately reflect the biogeographical, historical, and legal uniqueness of the island, and everyday experiences of its inhabitants than supra-regional media coverage can. Irrespective of scientific accuracy, local translation regimes therefore much better serve the purpose of translating and communicating climate change knowledge in a meaningful context. However, the selectivity of knowledge reproduction generated by national, regional, and local translation regimes (discourse model) should of course be critically examined, especially in terms of the unequal access to knowledge and existing power relations.
The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the travelling idea of climate change has fallen on very fertile ground on Palawan, where it was easily able to adapt to the local conditions in order to thrive and prosper. The local understanding of climate change and its causalities is widely shared. As Rudiak-Gould found on the Marshall Islands, climate change on Palawan also appears to be an idea that “insults their [island, as it threatens the livelihoods of the inhabitants], but flatters their categories” (Rudiak-Gould 2013a: 177). Basic beliefs and assumptions about human-environment and human-weather relationships are affirmed rather than challenged by the global discourse. It strengthens people’s traditionally strong environmentalism and validates their strong rejection of, for example, cutting trees or burning garbage. In accordance with social representations theory (Smith and Joffe 2013), the way people make scientific climate change knowledge familiar and thus comprehensible strongly resonates with pre-existing local terms and cognitive categories. To explore the general question of how climate change is communicated and made sense of in terms of how climate-exposed people understand the scientific concept, the case study of Palawan demonstrates the importance of taking local ecologies and local systems of reference into consideration, i.e., the complex interconnections of climate change knowledge with associated knowledge domains.
In this regard, Palawan is indeed a best practice example of climate change adaptation and mitigation (Department of Environment and Natural Resources 2012). However, this is not the result of a successful communication of scientific climate change knowledge. Rather, the island’s success represents an inversion of what is typically meant by the knowledge-behavior or value-action gap in regard to climate change.
Instead of not acting accordingly, the people of Palawan are very committed to preserving and even enhancing their natural environment, and they do it for various reasons. Collectively planting thousands of trees each year is perhaps their most remarkable social practice. While tree planting is framed as a measure to fight climate change, it also fulfils other social functions such as insular identity formation and self-empowerment. In many respects, the people of Palawan do act exceptionally climate friendly. Yet the gap between their apparently climate-friendly behavior and what they know about scientific climate change remains. This shows two implications. First, the deficit model and its assumption of a unidirectional relationship between knowledge and action cannot be maintained. Social behavior is complex, and not only driven by explicit knowledge. Second, it shows that a perfectly accurate public understanding of science is not needed to motivate people to implement climate change adaption and mitigation measures.
Not surprisingly, even without scientifically tenable beliefs about the environment, weather, and climate, sustainable thinking and behavior are (and have always been) possible.
On Palawan, the discourse on climate change may have served more as post hoc justification than original motivation for past and present behavior, but current anthropological literature on climate change perception suggests that it may not be an exception in this regard (cf.
Rudiak-Gould 2013a; Greschke and Tischler 2015; De Wit, Pascht, and Haug 2018). Irrespective of whether people embrace or reject the idea of anthropogenic climate change, the global discourse apparently has the potential to maintain and reinforce local cultures, i.e., pre-existing beliefs, values, and behavioral patterns. From this point of view, it becomes clear why some societies appear to do the right things for the wrong reasons, whereas others appear to do the wrong things despite knowing better. Thus, perhaps the gap between knowing and acting should not be of great concern to climate change communicators who seek to get people involved in climate protection. Rather, they are well advised to adapt to the place and people they address, and to take local human-environment relationships and connected cultural models of nature and the weather into consideration. Instead of focusing only on knowledge transfer, they should keep in mind that local knowledge is always a complex co-product, and that behavioral motivation is derived
from various sources, of which scientific knowledge is not known to be the most powerful in the short or medium term. The climate is a slowly changing system, and to a certain extent this also applies to societies.
Whilst there is agreement that the constant provision of relevant information based on unequivocal empirical findings is necessary, especially on urgent matters like climate change, there should be more critical assessment and better understanding of how information is translated beyond the realm of science and national policies, and how meanings change between the global and the local levels. In order to transform communication on climate change into a dialogue rather than a one-sided, top-down approach, it is advisable from an anthropological point of view to put more effort into understanding “them” better, before trying to make “them” understand.
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